Tech News In Short – By Vishal Dutia

Anchor: Everything you need to know!

Download Anchor and tune in to daily audio broadcasts or create your own!

Anchor is an audio streaming and publishing platform that lets you listen to and publish bite-sized audio broadcasts. Anchor says its service is “radio, reinvented,” which is a pretty fitting description. You can use Anchor to essentially create your own radio station, populated with audio tidbits, music from Spotify and Apple Music, transitions between sections, call-ins, and interviews. You can even use Anchor to create a podcast feed.

What’s new with Anchor?

We’ll be keeping this section updated with the latest, greatest stuff coming from Anchor. Be sure to check back regularly for the latest updates!

August 8, 2017

If you’re ever in a situation where you can’t really pull out your headphones or blast audio through your smartphone speakers, Anchor’s new video feature is going to be great for you!

The feature transcribes the audio you upload to Anchor and puts together a dynamic video with both text and audio that you can share across social media. I don’t know about you, but I often find myself watching Facebook videos on mute regardless of whether I’m in a situation where I can listen to audio without disturbing others. As much as we see video on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, this was a very smart move by Anchor.

You can now easily share an Anchor video wherever you want — and other users will be able to share your video moving forward, too. Best of all, you can pick the size that makes sense for where you’re sharing, including wide (16:9, perfect for YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook), square (1:1, perfect for Instagram), and story (9:16, perfect for Instagram Stories).

Can you give me a quick summary of what exactly Anchor is?

Sure can! Anchor really is what it says on the tin: “radio, reinvented.” In the same way that radio DJs line up music tracks, transitions, interviews, and audio bites, Anchor gives you the ability to do the same. You can use your phone’s microphone to record audio tracks, use the app to edit them as you see fit, add in transitions and music from Spotify and Apple Music, and publish your broadcasts to your personal station.

The best way to understand what Anchor is is by giving it a listen. Here’s one of my favorite Anchor broadcasts, Let Me Google That:

You can also listen to Anchor on your Google Home, Amazon Echo, Alexa-enabled devices, and devices with the Google Assistant.

To listen to Anchor using the Google Assistant just say, “Hey Google, play me the news from Anchor.”

To listen to Anchor using an Alexa-enabled device just say, “Alexa, enable the Anchor skill.”

Got it. If I do want to create a station of my own, how do I do that?

Well, you’ll start by downloading the Anchor app and creating an account. You can use Facebook, Twitter, or an email address to create an account. Once you’re all signed in and set up, you can use the gigantic red plus (+) button at the bottom of the app to add segments to your station.

You can add five types of content:

Interview: You can record and broadcast a phone call.

Record: You can record audio segments of your voice. You literally lift your phone to your ear and talk to Anchor like you’d talk on the phone. You can also record and publish audio on the desktop by going to anchor.fm/clip.

Music: Connect your Spotify and/or Apple Music account to add music tracks to your broadcast. If listeners have their Spotify or Apple Music accounts connected, they can hear full songs. Otherwise, Anchor will play previews of the tracks you choose.

Interludes: You can add small transitions between sections of your broadcast. There are loads to chose from and you can tap the play button to get a preview.

Call-ins: Listeners can “call in” to your station by sending in audio recordings. Those recordings will show up in the Call-ins section. You can add them to your broadcast and respond to them if you’d like.

I heard you can turn your Anchor station into a podcast … Is that true?

It’s absolutely true! If you’d like to publish your Anchor station as a podcast (so that you can create a show for Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and more), you can use the Anchor app to create an RSS feed of your content. Anchor makes it fairly simple to get up and running, but they’ve put together a comprehensive guide with screenshots as well as a tutorial video to help you through the process:

OK, say I’m done using Anchor and I want to remove my account. How do I do that?

If you’d like to remove your account from Anchor, you’ll have to contact Anchor’s support team to let them know you’d like to delete your account. You can contact Anchor by emailing support@anchor.fm.

Questions?

If you have any questions or thoughts about Anchor, be sure to give us a shout in the comments!